FOTA is considering a plan to move the extra Barcelona test from March 8-11 to March 10-13, and is canvassing the teams today.
The original date emerged yesterday, after it became clear that Bahrain wasn’t going ahead. The new date would exactly mirror that of the Bahrain GP weekend, and ending on a Saturday/Sunday, would guarantee the track a bumper crowd.
Either way the teams will travel back to their home bases in order to prepare the cars for shipping to Melbourne. It seems that some teams would prefer to have two extra days of ‘factory time’ for R&D and production of new parts before the test, rather than after it.
If the date does change it leaves a 16-day gap between the two Barcelona tests, although teams do have some leeway to do straightline running – a logical move given that the Idiada test track is right outside Barcelona – or if they haven’t already used their allocation, some filming work.
Adam Cooper F1 
Please move the test to 18 – 21 as I’m already booked there that weekend! What a bummer, That would have made the break really special.
But its too close to the Aussie dates. Ah well..
I think a non championship race over that weekend is in order.
In a scale of 1 to 10: 20
Makes sense. I like how at first I thought it was F1 thinking of te fans but it’s really because they want more r&d time. Haha
Either way it’d be cool if they do the “race conditions” rear wing test in front of an audience – as I assume it would involve cars following each other at speed
Im sure Mclaren will sigh in relief. That car sure does look problematic. Although im wandering off topic here.
Extra days are required to give the hormone replacement team a bit more time to organise themselves.
Mclaren must be heavning a sigh of releif.